World amateur wrestling body FILA has brought its campaign to save the sport in the Olympics to its birthplace, Greece.
FILA, with the help of the Greek wrestling federation, has organised a senior international tournament in Olympia this weekend to help publicise its fight to keep the sport in the Olympic Games in 2020.
The 15-member executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in February voted to remove wrestling from the Olympic schedule. The IOC will make a final decision in Buenos Aires in September on whether wrestling will remain for 2020.
"We were punished by the IOC for not listening to suggestions in the past," FILA president Nenad Lalovic told AFP.
"I don't blame the IOC. This is our problem and we have to fix it. We came here (Greece) to become wiser. We've come back to our roots."
Lalovic said ever since the IOC decision in February, FILA had been working to make drastic changes in the sport "in order to make it more popular, more watchable.
"Every week, we think about changes. Even if we make mistakes, it's worth trying them. We have not gone through a facelift, but major changes. We are not afraid of changing for the better," Lalovic said.
He expressed optimism that the IOC decision will be in favour of wrestling come September.
"Wrestling is practised everywhere on earth. Strictly speaking, no other sport has that. Look at the US. They have 28,000 scholarships for wrestling and 9000 of them are for girls. I believe in a short time we did a lot by changing rules, our constitution, we introduced women onto our board, we made the sport more competitive," Lalovic said.
The FILA congress met in Moscow in May to agree to changes, with delegates saying their sport risked being incomprehensible to outsiders. The rule changes to both Olympic wrestling styles -- Greco Roman and Freestyle -- aim to make the sport more attractive for TV audiences by favouring spectacular throws and attacking wrestling.
Share
